183.5.] "^*'^ [Brinton. 



In the Mixteca tonp:ue the imperfect is thus formed from the present, 

 which carries with it tlie personal sign, and the perfect without its per- 

 sonal sign, a proceeding which, however rude and awkward it may be, 

 shows a just appreciation of the peculiarity of this past tense, which 

 expresses an action as going on, and therefore present in past time. 

 The expression of continuous action is placed first, " I sin," then this 

 is more precisely defined by the mark of past time, " this was so;" 

 Yo-dzatevain-di-ni-cuvui. Yo is the sign of the present, ni of the pret- 

 erit, di is the pronoun ; the other two words, to sin and to he : " I was 

 sinning." 



The sign of the present, yo, is probably an abbreviation of the verb 

 yodzo, I stand upon or over something, and so there is a second auxil- 

 iary in the sentence. This may often be a means of discovering the 

 origin of tense signs, as, especially in American tongues, tenses are 

 often formed by the union of verbs, as also occurs in Sanscrit and 

 Greek. 



The Othomi distinguishes certain past tenses, which, however, are 

 separated by other characteristics, by a prefixed xa, which is called the 

 third person singular of a substantive verb. As these tenses are precisely 

 those in which the action must be completed, the perfect, pluperfect 

 and future psrfect, not, however, tha imperfect and past aorist, such a 

 connection is very suitable. Of this verb we have only cca, and there 

 is another substantive verb (jui^ which itself takes oca in its conjuga- 

 tion. 



The Totonaca language unites the perfect, in the person spoken of, 

 with the third person singular of the future of the substantive verb, to 

 form a future perfect. This is no completed form, but only an awk- 

 ward sequence of two verbs ; yc-paxquilli-na-huan, literally, " I have 

 loved, it will be," = " I shall have loved." 



In similar manner the substantive verb is used to form a tense of the 

 sul)junctive. 



The sign of both the perfects in this tongue is the syllable nit, and 

 7iiy means " to die." It is not improbable that this affix is derived from 

 this verb. Death and destruction are suitable ideas to express the past, 

 and some languages employ negative particles as signs of the preterit. 

 In the Tamanaca this is not exactly the case, but the negative particle 

 puni added to a word which signifies an animate thing, intimates that 

 it has died ; papa puni, the deceased father, literally, " father not." In 

 the Omagua tongue the same word signifies old, dead, and not present. 



In the Maipure and Carib tongues the negative particles ma and spa 

 are also the signs of the preterit. Bopp's suggestion that the Sanscrit 

 augment was originally a privative finds support in this analogy. Yet 

 I would not speak conclusively on this point, as probably that, the 

 Greek augment e, and the Mexican o, are only lengthened sounds, in- 

 tended to represent concretely the length of the past time. At any rate 

 one must regard the negation as au actual destruction, a " been, and 

 no longer being," not as simply a negation of the present. 



